Lawyer Qiao Zhanxiang lost his case against the Ministry of Railways last year, but the lawsuit resulted in a public hearing on the railway transport charges for 2002.

This is but only one of the more than 100,000 administrative lawsuits that took place in 2001 and the successful rate for common people ranged from 30-35 percent as against a global average of 10 percent.

China promulgated the Administrative Procedure law in 1991. Since then 730,000 cases have been brought before the people's courts in the country, with government departments as the defendants.

According to the law, citizens can sue the governments at all levels and their departments and they can win the cases," said Jiang Bixin, Chief Judge of the Administrative Court of the Supreme People's Court.

In the early 1990s, the winning rate of the common people was around 40 percent and it has been steadied at 30-35 percent since then, according to the Supreme Court statistics.

Most of the administrative cases involved public security, resources disputes, requisition of land and resettlement of displaced people. Now administrative cases concerning economic affairs are on the rise, especially those concerning the standardization of economic order.

There are less such cases in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangdong and the western part of the country than in the middle developed provinces and regions as in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, the government behavior is more standard while in the western part of the country, the people have a weaker sense of defending their own rights.

Another reason for the surge of administrative legal action is the extension of the scope for taking legal action against administrative departments by such laws as trademark law and the patent law. In addition, the Supreme People's Courts also lifted the restrictions on the qualifications of plaintiffs, allowing those who have immediate interests with the administrative organs to take legal action.

"People used to be afraid of the government or were unwilling to sue the government; others resorted to revenge or often went to extremes to seek justice," he said. "But today, more and more people know that they have to turn to law to defend their legitimate rights and interests."

Supreme People's Court President Xiao Yang said on many occasions that in the post-WTO era and as China is moving toward the rule of law, government bodies and ordinary citizens are sure to be truly equal before the law.

(China Daily March 15, 2002)